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Heed Ronald Reagan's Warning

RUSH: Ronald Reagan in 1961, Operation Coffee Cup, the whole thing is ten minutes, we don't have all ten minutes of it, but Operation Coffee Cup campaign against socialized medicine as it was then proposed by Democrats. Here is just a portion. We have three sound bites of Reagan from a recording that was distributed by the American Medical Association.

REAGAN: Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program. One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. Most people are a little reluctant to oppose anything that suggests medical care for people who possibly can't afford it.

RUSH: Ronald Reagan. And, by the way, Norman Thomas is the grandfather of Newsweek reporter Evan Thomas, and he was an avowed socialist. Here's the second of our three clips of Reagan.

REAGAN: But let's also look from the other side, at the freedom the doctor loses. A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it's like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren't equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can't live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go. This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being.

RUSH: And that provision was part and parcel of Hillary Care, assigning doctors regionally, assigning them geographically. It went so far in Hillary's health care bill as to assign what specialty they would learn. Doctors were going to be totally controlled. And it would be no different in this health care bill if Obama and Reid and Pelosi and Waxman get what they want. Here's the next one.

REAGAN: You and I can do a great deal. We can write to our congressmen, to our senators. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms and at the moment the key issue is, we do not want socialized medicine. Write those letters now; call your friends and tell them to write them. If you don't, this program, I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow, and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day, as Norman Thomas said, we will awake to find that we have socialism, and if you don't do this and if I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free.

RUSH: I tell you, I get chills up my back. I feel like I'm listening to my dad. My dad said the same thing to me. "You boys are going to be slaves." Ronald Reagan and my dad, they grew up in the thick of the Cold War. They knew who communists were, socialists, and they knew what their intent was. And they were scared to death for my brother and me over what would happen if they weren't defeated. Here's Ronald Reagan in 1961 warning of the dangers of socialized medicine. That's how far back the left has been trying to get it. And he's right. It's a parallel, in a way, with global warming. The environmentalist wackos have made great inroads because who wants a dirty planet, who wants to destroy the planet? Who can possibly oppose people who say they're trying to save animals and the planet? The same token, who can oppose a plan that's going to get health care for everybody?

Now, so far they've been beaten back, for 50 years they have been beaten back. But they never stop. The lesson here is they never stop and there are plenty of Norman Thomases around today. They don't call themselves socialists. They don't even call themselves liberals. They call themselves progressives now. But when Norman Thomas said, "The American people would never vote for socialism, but under the name of liberalism the American people will adopt every fragment of the socialist program," that's no different than Rahm Emanuel saying, "We have to take advantage of this crisis." It's no different than Obama lying through his teeth about what the health care plan contains. It's what the left always does, folks. It's what they always have to do. They can't be open. You would reject everything they say they want to do if they were open and honest about it. So the battle never ends. Well, battles end. The war will never end. Remember the history of the world is communism, socialism, totalitarianism, statism. That's the history of the world. That's the history of mankind.

The United States of America is the exception and that is part and parcel how you define American exceptionalism, founded on liberty and freedom and the knowledge that those traits, the liberty freedom, all come from our creator, and there are people who for their own aggrandizement and power want to snuff that liberty out. That's just the way it is. They've always been here in America, too, but they've never gotten as close to realizing their dream as they are now. They own the White House. They own the House of Representatives. They own the Senate. They must not own all of those after the elections of 2010. But they're never going to go away. They'll come back under the guise of some other issue or name trying to advance the agenda. It's just who they are. I don't care about their motivations. I don't care to try to explain motivations. It's just who liberals and socialists are. And after they own the White House, and after they own the House of Representatives and after they own the Senate and after they own the Pentagon and after they own everything else in government they can populate, they will then own you. And that's what Reagan was trying to warn of back in 1961.